


Tipping the Scales

by maximum_overboner



Category: Villainous (Cartoon)
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Smut, Friends With Benefits, Oral Sex, begrudgingly budding relationship, deeply unhealthy dynamic, dementia and black hat are both awful but that's part of the charm, fear kink, lizardhat - Freeform, several short stories set over the course of months, two emotionally immature people boink their way to resolution
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-14
Updated: 2017-11-14
Packaged: 2019-02-02 08:11:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12722889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maximum_overboner/pseuds/maximum_overboner
Summary: Dementia thinks Black Hat is to be adored and adulated as the supreme being of evil he is. Black Hat knows Dementia has a damp bit he can put his penis in. Meeting for no-strings sex fulfils a need in both of them; Dementia gets to pretend there's something more and Black Hat gets his rocks off.But there comes a point where the pretending has to stop.





	Tipping the Scales

**Author's Note:**

> the lack of lizardhat content is a CRIME and i must CONTRIBUTE IMMEDIATELY

Black Hat considered the swathes of people that wanted to sleep with him and found it as baffling as it was hilarious.

He was a dangerous beast. An apex predator amongst apex predators. He didn’t have healthy, shiny hair. He didn’t have an even, glowing complexion. His teeth weren’t straight and white. His eyes were not soft and flattering. There was no sweet and gentle nature waiting to be wrested from his hard exterior, and certainly no suffering soul to be saved. He was a slimy, freakish manipulator that could only stumble into syllables and pretend he was fluent in human tongues, accenting incorrectly and, despite all his years of speaking, sounding eerie no matter what language he happened to be wrestling at the time. He was absolutely grotesque. 

Years ago, when the mood would take him, he would disguise himself as the most handsome man he could imagine, obsessing in front of a mirror. He consulted paintings and considered ratios, then would stride out and engage his considerable charm. Then, when he had bedded whatever slab of meat he had been eying that day, he would slowly peel off his delicately constructed face to reveal the hideous monstrosity he was and would take great pleasure in their horror as they scrambled into the street, naked. Not today. Too desensitized, he thought.

He sat at his desk, sighing grimly at the paperwork in front of him. He just didn’t understand it. Once, in a fit of pique, he asked Dementia why this was the case. He was a dull-scaled, teeth-baring, snarling atrocity that drove men to madness and back. He set off every evolutionary alarm bell there was. That was the point.    

Dementia laughed between mouthfuls of chips and explained that those things were part of his charm, which left him more confused than ever. It was the suit, he decided. People love suits.

He signed off on a proposal then began reviewing the next. ‘Investment required for construction and maintenance of banjos that summons bees’. He didn’t need to read the rest, he was already totally sold on that one. It was good to support local, farm-fresh villainy, even if it required significant investment and was a great deal more expensive than just shrieking at your underling until he had another breakdown and built that death ray. A new, shiny generation of villains he could support, rear, guide, then beat down thoroughly because there’s only one supervillain here. In the spirit of mediocrity, Dementia appeared at the door, ‘casually’ leaning in a way that accentuated her breasts.  

“Afternoon, hot stuff,” she purred. He glanced up at her, ready to erupt.

“What do you want?”

“You got some mail.”

Oh. That was disappointingly reasonable. Not even he could justify a blowup.

“Put it all on the desk. I’ll read them when I’m done.”

She sauntered over, making a point to sway her hips. Black Hat, despite his best efforts, despite scolding himself, stole a glance.

“Lemme just put these down,” she said.

She leaned over the desk, putting her breasts inches away from his face.

“Just gonna… Put the mail down.”

She stayed there.

“Somewhere over here.”

Was she swaying her shoulders?

“So you can pick them up. And read them. The letters. ‘Cause of the mail you got.”

She was. She actually was. How brazen was this idiot?.

“You know the mail was kind of late today? I dunno if the guy got stuck in traffic-- whoops!”

She threw the letters to the ground.

“Dropped them all! _Guess I gotta bend over and pick 'em up!”_

She smiled, spun on her heels, and bent over, scooting up her skirt a little. Black Hat cursed her for being so embarrassingly transparent, then castigated himself for falling prey to her advances. He shifted in his seat and tactfully adjusted his trousers, thankful for the privacy of the large desk. He looked at her, wiggling at him, and considered how long it had been.

… A while. Not enough to be considered a dry spell, but a while. Though he had only ever engaged in one-time trysts and fled when it was over. The prospect of a long-term arrangement was usually too dangerous, it opened him up to betrayal. Luckily Dementia was too stupid to come up with a complex web of lies and deceit, and too loyal to dream of doing it in the first place. As far as damp, warm places to stick his dick in went, she was acceptable.

_“Fine.”_

She leapt on top of him. He blustered as her hands roamed his torso, groping his shoulders and unbuttoning his vest. She slavered over his neck, and only now did it register what she was doing.

“--You aren’t a lamprey, calm down!”

_“I could be your lamprey if it would turn you on.”_

He grimaced.

“It wouldn’t.”

Dementia’s face fell.

“You said it was fine!”

“A ‘yes’ isn’t a go-ahead to hop up and burrow down into my body to tackle my gonads from the inside. You can’t be trusted.”

He shoved her off unceremoniously, grabbing her by the ponytail and wedging her under the desk.

“This is all you’re getting.”

She bumped her head painfully, cursing and rubbing her scalp.

“Really? Are you really gonna do that? Just whip your dick out, I suck, then shut up and leave?”

“Yes.”

“I mean, I’m totally gonna,” she said, “but still.”

Black Hat thrummed his fingers on the desk, doing his best to suppress the sudden and considerable spike in rage for the sake of getting his dick dunked.

“Just hurry up and do it already. I’m already reconsidering.”

“Trust me, I am hurrying! God… I can’t believe it. I’m finally gonna touch your dick!”

She squealed with excitement. Black Hat rolled his eye as she went on, her sycophancy making him cringe.

“The guys on the forum are gonna _shit!_ D’you mind if I take a picture?”

“What? _No!”_

“You don’t mind? That’s so sweet! Hold on, I gotta unzip you first. I’m gonna get so many not-real internet-points for this one.”

He kicked his large chair back and shoved his face under the desk to meet hers.

“If you ever suggest doing that again,” he said curtly, “the only picture they’ll see is your mutilated corpse. Do I make myself clear?”

“No,” she said, completely unruffled, “your answer was kinda ambiguous. Oh well!”

He looked at her wearily, and with contempt. He was torn between kicking her out and continuing but he felt he had come too far to stop.

“Go back to jiggling.”

She unzipped her top and did so cheerfully. There we go. That was better. Now he was back in the spirit of things again. Nipple piercings. Unusual! He settled back and resumed looking over his paperwork, wondering how long it would take for him to drool. His breath hitched when she pawed at his groin, laughing salaciously.

“Seems like you’re good to go, huh?”

“I’m not here to make small talk.”

“You’re not here for small anything, from what I’m feeling,” she purred.

Black Hat’s view on small talk performed a complete one-eighty but in the interest of getting back to his paperwork he compelled her to hurry up. Her fingers glided up his length, slowly pulling down the zipper and coaxing him out. Coiling and uncoiling leisurely around her fingers was a thick, dark tendril, slick and wet like a tongue. Dementia had never encountered something like this before and Black Hat couldn’t help but revel smugly in her wonder. His cock dipped and weaved as he, with some concentration, showed off that it was truly prehensile. He wanted her to know, to have it seared into her brain, that she was indulging something far greater than not just her but her entire species. He shuddered at the sensation. Dementia poked the tapered end with her finger, flicking it gently, drawing an undignified noise out of him. It wasn’t painful, but it certainly wasn’t what he had in mind.  

“Neat!”

Black Hat looked affronted. He had half a mind to lean forward and slap her across the face with it.

“It’s not neat,” he spat. “You should be equal parts awed and terrified.”

She flopped it to and fro, giggling. It bounced with an undignified ‘plapping’ noise. Black Hat nearly choked.  

“It kinda reminds me of a sea cucumber,” she said. “This thing is so interesting to watch. When you get a hard-on, do you even beat it, or do you just watch it go? If I were you I’d be beating it nonstop all day. I mean, more than normal. It’s like a… What are those things? Lava lamps.”

She flopped it once more, like a cat with a toy.

“It’s so cold, too.”

“If you don’t hurry I’ll turn you to mush and jam my cock into whatever festering meat pile is left.”

“Alright, grouchy! You big grumpy-bear!”

She gripped the base of his cock, giving it a few jerks just to see it wriggle. She opened her mouth, bringing it to touch the very edge of her lips, close enough that he could feel her tantalizing breath on him, then just as quickly pulled away. Black Hat didn’t hide his scowl. He was close to bursting a blood vessel.

“I just remembered,” she said. “You got any candles? I always thought we’d have candles. Maybe smooth jazz. Get a real classy vibe going.”

“Sucking my cock under a desk is not classy.”

“That’s ‘cause we don’t have the candles.”

“Dementia?” 

“Yeah?”

“Say ‘ah’.”

“Ah...?”

He took this chance to shove his dick in her mouth before she piped up again, which she accepted with a contented flutter of the eyes and very muffled praise. Black Hat hissed, his reptilian tongue slithering out and a thin trail of saliva dripping from his chin as he took in the sensation of her mouth, wet and moving and almost unbearably hot against his cold flesh. He wrapped her tongue slowly, then the other way, then back again, as if they were kissing, and she did her best to bob her head against the moving bulk. She had to sway gently to follow it, and Black Hat noted with some amusement that it made him feel like a snake charmer. He was quiet, save for hitched breaths and the occasional low, deep grunt, and the few noises he did make were masked by her. She slowed down to hear him but he barked at her to keep pace, gently bobbing his hips. The words in front of him turned to slurry, useless and barely legible. But he didn’t want her to get too big a head, so he pretended to work some, even if that involved moving things around and looking like he was concentrating. He could restrain himself no longer, his cock writhing in her mouth.  

“Choke on me,” he groaned.

Her dreams of giving him a life-changing, perspective-altering orgasm fizzled out unceremoniously. He panted, shuddered, and filled her mouth, his claws gripping the back of her head painfully. She pulled away, spluttering. Her eyes watered.

“Dude,” she coughed, “it-- got in my nose--”

He grunted, waving her off. He sat slack in his chair, breathing heavily as she continued to hack and wheeze.

“That’s so fucking nasty-- urgh--”

“Stop complaining. You got what you wanted.”

She coughed until she couldn’t anymore. She stayed there for a moment until it passed, then looked up at him adoringly.

“Don’t pretend you’re doing me the favour,” she teased, handling his now limp cock. “I mean, I’m happy you’re happy, but this kind of stuff goes both ways. How long is that tongue of yours--?”  

“No.”

Her face fell.

“Aren’t you gonna--”

“No.”

She sighed, crawling out from under the desk. She adjusted her skirt and wiped her mouth, her lipstick smeared. Black Hat took in how she looked and stored it away for later. Black Hat looked her up and down.

“What the hell are you still doing here? Don’t you have legs to break or books to not-read?”

She blinked, deciding on her options and landing on ‘playing it cool’. She rubbed her neck as if she wasn’t delighted with what had just happened.

“Uh, yeah… I got some… Stuff to watch, so...”

“Go do that.”

She waited for him to tear off his shirt, leap the desk, drop to his knees and declare his secret, burning love for her. She hovered nearby. He was reading a file, scribbling notes as he went, a calculator by his side.

“It’s… A big season for anime, y’know,” she said.

“I didn’t,” he grunted.

“I was gonna watch some stuff with Flug, but he has shitty taste. I know you’re busy but when you’re done, d’you wanna--”

“Oh, no. Fuck me. No. Never. No.”

“Even a gross, scary one?”

“No.”

“But--”

“No.”

Her heart sank. She walked to the door. She was pulled from her thoughts by his voice.

“Hold on.”

She whisked around, praying for him to be flat out on the table with a rose between his teeth. He wasn’t, he was sat in the chair just as he was before, but he nursed a very slight colour in his cheeks.

“Tomorrow I’ll be out,” he said, “and I’ll be busy the rest of the week. But I’ll be here on Friday. For six in the evening. As I am every Friday.”

The statement hung in the air between them.

“Do with that what you will,” he mumbled. Dementia smiled by the doorway, then threw him a wink as if there was any doubt. The door clicked shut. Black Hat sighed, his head fuzzy. He couldn’t help but feel that he had made a mistake. Like he had fed a street-cat. But the prospect of free and easy sex was too great a lure for him to resist, even if it was with…

Black Hat scrunched up his face.

 _Dementia._ But evildoers weren’t known for their responsible practices and impeccable impulse control. He knew her already burning feelings would only intensify. He just had to keep that under control and remind her of their arrangement and her place in the pecking order.

At least he didn’t have to worry about feelings, he thought.

 

* * *

 

She had mellowed out considerably. Since most of her time was spent devising ways to get into his pants actually doing so meant her brain could be freed up to think about other things. She had stopped smashing things around the house to amuse herself, much to Flug’s relief. But there were still the gifts. Flowers, and wine, and a dead cat left on the porch (that Black Hat went on to eat, though he didn’t tell her this). 

The clock chimed six and the door was opened, though he suspected she had been waiting outside, not wanting to jeopardize her chances. They shared a look, both of them heavy with anticipation. She swanned over and unzipped his fly. Black Hat closed his eyes and leaned back, then noted that he was not, in fact, being sucked off as he deserved. He cracked his good eye open. She was sat on the desk in front of him, her legs crossed.

“What are you doing? Why is your mouth up there and not on my penis.”

“Waiting,” she said, fluttering her eyelashes.   

“For what?”

She scooted back and opened her legs as far as her tight skirt would allow, propping up her shoes on the arms of his chair.

“Fair’s fair!”

“It’s been one week and you already have the gall, the audacity, to make demands of _me?”_

“Yeah!”

“Unbelievable.”

“I love it when you’re angry,” she purred. “That look you get. Really reminds me you’re not human.”

_“Freak.”_

She waggled her eyebrows at him, not taking the jibe in the way it was intended. Neither of them shifted, Dementia presenting and Black Hat crossing his arms at her.

“Fine,” she shrugged. “I can take care of myself.”

She unzipped her shirt and tugged languidly at her nipple ring. Black Hat was transfixed, watching the soft flesh yield and move under her efforts. He other hand sank into her underwear, he could make out her palm against the fabric as she rubbed slow, hard circles.

“Since I get to look you in the eye I want to really savour it. Nice and slow. Do it here and now, instead of outside your door after I blow you...”

Black Hat’s cock hardened painfully. His breath hitched as she spoke, the thought of her riding her fingers noiselessly outside the door running through his mind.  

”But it might take me a really, really, really long time… Kind of a shame! Making you wait while I’m right here. When all you’d have to do is a little work.”

Black Hat knew he was going to break, he could make out her wet cunt against the thin fabric, he could hear her slowly finger herself.

“I’ll just do it myself then,” he spat, not willing to give in without a fight. He tugged at his cock, fucking his hand as if to prove a point rather than pleasure himself. “I’ll have an angry wank. You think it’s the first time I’ve ever had to do one of those? Hmm? You think you’re so special?”

“Wouldn’t feel the same though, right? Or you could go all the way...”

“Not with you. Ever.”

“In that case…”

She let her tongue fall from her mouth and slowly, slowly wriggled it, looking him in the eye. Black Hat pulled her legs out towards him, hooking them over his shoulders. Dementia smacked her tailbone unceremoniously against the desk, her body jolting.

“Ow, fuck--!”

He drove his head under her skirt, wriggling his long, monstrous tongue against her slit, pressing through her underwear. She gasped, clutching his shoulder and forgetting about her pain.   

“Oh, _fuck--!”_

He chuckled. He continued moving his tongue, then pulled away when it hit something hard.

“Oh. That’s just my piercing. Don’t worry about it.”

“You have a genital piercing?”

“Yeah,” she shrugged. “Like, in the hood. Tried to get one in the clit, but the guy said it wasn’t the right shape. Lame.”

Now _that_ was really a novelty. He presented a claw, tearing up her skirt and earning a delicious spike in irritation.

“Hey, hey, no-- I like this skirt--!”

Black Hat made a point to tear the waistband in as awkward a way as he could, so that it couldn’t be easily fixed. He then hooked his claw into her underwear, eating up her discomfort.

“Don’t,” she said, “please, these are new. They were expensive.”

Snap! Torn up the side. She bashed her fist against the desk, using her free hand to hold them up.

“Come on, dude! I’d just take it off, I’m already down!”

“Oh, I know,” he said, “but the thought of you walking back through the mansion like this makes me laugh. Besides, did you think I’d just do whatever you demanded without finding some amusement of my own?”

“I was hoping,” she sulked.

“A shame,” he said, “but it just simply couldn’t be avoided. There was nothing that could have been done to prevent this. A true tragedy. Black with red frills-- you’ve really been paying attention to my tastes, haven’t you?”

“I know what you like.”

“Creepy.”

“I think you’d only like this if it was weird and fucked up.”

Black Hat conceded the point. He moved her hand, peeling off her ruined underwear, his long tongue coiled and primed. He then broke down laughing, hard enough to snort.

“You  _dye_ your _pubic hair!”_

Dementia’s cheeks tinged. He loved watching her become so delightfully uncomfortable. He saw it as extracting payment for the week before.

“Um, yeah? Of course? I’ve got an image to maintain? You have it easy, you don’t even have hair, but d’you know how often I end up naked when I start beating people up? What happens if there are news cameras, huh? I don’t want to be that one chick with the mismatched set!”

Black Hat cackled, wiping the tears from his eye.

“Fuck me sideways, _you_ _think you’re being reasonable!”_

She crossed her arms, still lying back.

“Come on, it’s normal.”

_“Green! You picked green! What’s wrong with you!”_

Her face was red, now. He revelled in her embarrassment, a rare treat.

“You go to all this effort--”

He waved at her head.

“-- And let your roots show. I don’t know who’s more embarrassed, you or me.”

She scowled. He waited until she was about to speak, then pressed his tongue firmly against the piercing to shut her up. She whimpered, squashing her thighs around his cheeks, arching her back when he unwound her easily with his tongue.  

“Oh my God-- oh my God, it’s actually happening-- oh my God--”

“Shut up.”

“Huh? I can’t hear you.”

“I said--”

Black Hat moved back, his breath cold and tickling.

“Shut up--”

She squashed his face with her thighs until his cheeks gathered up cutely, making him look petulant. She laughed. In response Black Hat took a talon to her thigh, piercing it and drawing blood. He twisted his nail into the small wound and then looked up, expecting her to flinch away. She bit her lip, her lidded eyes hard to see under the deep black of her eyeshadow.

“Mm,” she sighed, “do that again.”  

He grumbled. Trust him to be stuck with the only tart that _liked_ being tortured. He made a point to press his tongue in, too hard for her to really enjoy, then resumed. He slipped a finger in, then another, and it didn’t take long for her to cum. Her back was arching, sweat beading her body as she pushed herself up, torn between moving back and pushing forward.  

“I-- I-I-- I love you--!”

“Don’t say that, I’ll go soft!”

She came, slurring his name again and again in a chant, her hand scrabbling against the desk, her legs squeezing his neck painfully. Black Hat let her ride it out on his tongue then wiped his mouth and smiled smugly, secure in his own prowess. He crossed his arms and waited for her to sing his praises, and when her brain kicked back in she did, rambling about how she couldn’t believe that just happened and how amazing and weird it was, and how she felt this would really deepen their connection--

“You’re at the part I don’t care about, so I’m going to stop you. There’s only one thing you’re good at. Get to it.”

“Yeah, yeah, sure--”

She got on her knees, pawing eagerly at his zipper.

“I have a little time today,” he said. “A client cancelled; he misfired his death-ray and it blew up his skin. So go slowly. Take your time.”

He leaned back in his chair, tucking his hands behind his head and sighing in contentment.

“I want to savour it.”

She smirked at him.

“So--”

“I don’t want your life story, you moron!”

If it were anybody else she would bash his brains in for his rudeness, but with Black Hat it was part of the package (which she happened to be handling). Part of his charm, along with his cute little face, his perfectionism, and his perverse love of human suffering. She laughed and got to work, taking great care to move and roll her tongue slowly as she took him into her mouth. To her delight he was more vocal, sighing and grunting as he bobbed his hips upwards. He shuddered and bit his lip, his knife-like teeth protruding as he was more open in his pleasure.  

“There, there, right there.”

His cock wriggled, going stiff and undulating alternatively, the texture of it unusually firm. His breaths were ragged, his voice wavering as he luxuriated in his own absolute mastery of all he touched.

“Do you want to know a secret?”

She did, but he carried on, not caring enough to wait for an answer

 _“This is all you’re good for,”_ he groaned. She slowed, as if to consider this, then shrugged. Black Hat scowled, craving more of her annoyance, a rare departure from her sunny adoration of him.

“Grunt work,” he sighed, “and being a _warm meat tube_ for me _._ You’re a notch on a bedpost so notched that there’s barely any of it left. How does that make you feel?”

She nuzzled him, planting a soft smooch on his cock.

“I’m so happy we’re spending time together!”

Black Hat wanted to gag. For the sake of maintaining his own erection, he shut up, unwilling to entertain whatever sugary slime she dripped. He crossed his arms, sulking. He finished in her mouth, unwilling to look like he was enjoying himself, his arms still crossed and his scowl now set firmly on his face. Dementia flopped her head on his thigh, looking up at him.

“You liked that, huh?” 

He looked away.

“You can admit it! I think the reason your top hat is so big is ‘cause that’s where you keep your grumpiness.”

Black Hat gave her a look so pointed that he could barely see. He considered melting into a corrosive sludge and taking out the floor, but he really liked this chair. Suddenly, an idea came to him. With a smirk, he pointed to her shoulder.

“Hm. You have something on your shirt.”

“Huh?”

She looked down, not finding anything.

“What is it?”

“I’m not sure. Perhaps it fell from a tree.”

She spun, trying to find the offending seed.

“Is it-- Is it on my back, my shoulder?”

“Yes. Let me just get that for you.”

Black Hat gently extended his claw, severing her shoulder strap. He then did the same to the other, ruining her shirt. Then, for good measure, he shredded the front of it as well. Dementia was yelling.

“Oh,” he said, “ _o_ _ops.”_

 

* * *

 

They had fallen into a pattern. Every Friday, six o’clock on the dot, Dementia would swagger into the study as if she were the boss and Black Hat would sit there and be serviced with his hands behind his head. Eight weeks of nothing but this, with Black Hat throwing her the odd bone in the form of some grudging cunnilingus in the interest of keeping her available. The tension in both of them spent in an hour. But he had noticed that in the space between; passing one another in the hallway, glances during the broadcast, the looks they shared lingered and grew. Then, when that because normal, it was the odd whispered comment and husky promise of things to come. Then when that became normal it turned to shoving one another against walls in the days leading up to Friday and grinding over clothes, desperate for one another and pulling away when they heard Flug nearby, both of them fond of the fantasy of an ‘office affair’ even if there was no consequence at all to being ‘caught’. What could Black Hat do, fire himself? For _unethical conduct?_ He mentioned it to Dementia after a session, and she laughed as well. It was a fine arrangement that favoured him, as they all should, and even if it meant putting up with her idiocy they made good…

He considered a term. Dementia had suggested ‘fuckbuddies’, and he reminded her that they weren’t ‘buddies’ so the term didn’t fit.

“I think you’re my buddy,” she said, tracing lazy circles on his bare abdomen and breathing in his smell.

“That kind of thing goes two ways. Otherwise, it’s just aggravated stalking.”

“‘Aggravated-stalkies’ could still work.”

“No, it couldn’t.”

“How about ‘lovers’,” she purred, as brazen as ever. Black Hat couldn’t help but admire her dumb, unwavering tenacity.

“No,” he said.

“‘Sugarbeans’. ‘Cause you’re so sweet.”

“Fuck, no. No. Never say that again.”

“Don’t you think we’re cute sugarbeans, honey?”

Black Hat gagged. He relented, if only to get her to stop.

“‘Fuckbuddies’ is fine, go back to that.”

She pumped her fist in the air.

“I _knew_ we were friends!”

 

* * *

 

Dementia kicked open the door, backflipped into the room and landed in a full split.

“You would think the invisibility would make you subtle,” Black Hat said, not looking up from his work. “Even accidentally.”

“Yeah! You ready to get your dick blown wide open?”

“Must you find a way to ruin everything you touch?”

She leapt up, ignoring him.

“Hell yeah, you are!”

Black Hat sighed, unzipping his fly. With animalistic speed, Dementia leapt forward and took his cock into her mouth, sucking as hard as she could. Black Hat yelped.  

“E-Ease off, e-e--ease--”

She didn’t, taking great delight in her gentle torment of him. She removed him from her mouth.

“Speaking’s kinda hard for you, isn’t it? It makes you sound cute. The voice thing, the rasp. ‘S charming.”

She winked at him.

“All this time and you’ve still not got it down, huh?”

“I speak better than you, you insolent bitch--”

Dementia looked at him smugly, shoved his cock into her mouth and sucked on the tip, thrumming her tongue along the underside. He clamped his hands to his face and his legs spasmed as if electrocuted. He croaked, struggling to form words, feeling them slither and hiss in his throat, mangling what was left with his gnashing teeth. She removed him with a comical pop, then rested her head on her hand, looking satisfied with herself. He was barely coherent.

“Y-You--”

_“Yes?”_

“Y--”

He gasped and swallowed, trying to calm himself long enough to enunciate.

“Y--Y-You m--”

She tapped her fingers rhythmically on his leg, giving her nails a once over. Chipped polish already? Ugh.

_“Go on.”_

“-- You m-made your point,” he sulked.

She resumed at a more reasonable pace, always happy to extract something from him.

“Hardly fair,” he mumbled.

She sucked him like always, working diligently until he was on the very brink of cumming into her mouth. Then, in a move as obvious as it was brave, she swept the papers off the desk and sat down, legs akimbo and brandishing her ‘fuck-me’ eyes. He was too far gone to complain. Black Hat rose to his feet, braced a hand to the desk and fucked her as hard as he could, hard enough to make the wood rattle. His claws scraped the mahogany, but with the way she was moaning he didn’t last long. His hips went rigid and he threw back his head, grunting from the very bottom of his throat as he unloaded into her, driving his hips up as hard as he could. She flinched at the feeling.   

“It’s _cold--!”_

 _“Shut up,”_ he hissed, _“don’t speak, shut up.”_

He stayed there, locked, until he was spent. His breaths came rushing back and he had to brace both hands to the desk to stay standing.

“I promised I wouldn’t do that,” he said, quietly.

“Well, we did,” she squealed, hardly believing her luck. “We did, we totally did! I knew you couldn’t resist, we so did!”

“Don’t rub it in.”

Dementia nursed a small smile, and then a very large one. Black Hat braced his pride, but it wasn’t enough.

“You didn’t last very long--”

_“I was already worked up!”_

“D’you think you’ll last longer next time…? Kind of a disappointment...”

He was being lured in with the most obvious bait in the world, yet his ego demanded he take it.

“I want you to know,” he said, “that _I_ know what you’re doing here. I’m not blind, and I’m not stupid.”

“... But you’re still falling for it?”

“I am, yes.”

“Great!”

“Tomorrow. At twelve.”

“Aren’t you busy?”

“I was.”

 

* * *

 

Embarrassment he could obtain, he was happy to wound with words. Shame, perhaps. But in the time they were together, not once had he ever extracted _fear._ He braced his talons delicately around her neck, over the thin bands of muscle that hid her carotid artery. He slid into her and she wriggled under his grasp, breath hitching. He squeezed his fingers, indenting the flesh like he was testing a steak for doneness, his other hand slowly pulling up her shirt to expose her breasts. He took his time, tugging absently at the piercing and squeezing her with a satisfied huff.

“If I punctured your neck,” he said, mouth by her ear, his voice burbling and rasping as he whispered, “right here... You would die in four minutes.”

She shuddered visibly. He thrust again, slowly, then held himself there. He looked at her face to gauge her terror, baring his teeth and allowing his monstrous tongue to loll from his mouth. He made a point to enunciate.

“Coughing…”

He pressed a little harder. Her chest was rising and falling haphazardly, and her heartbeat thundered under his fingers.    

“And choking _._ ”

He pressed tighter still.

“I could strangle you right now. I’m fond of strangling. Fifteen seconds and that’s you gone. You’d go cold, piss yourself and die. I wouldn’t even have to break your neck. You might even do the job for me, with all the thrashing you’ll do. It’s not hard. I’ve done it before.”

Dementia shivered. Black Hat grinned, brandishing his fangs. He was in his element.

“Every single part of you is on fire. Fight or flight. The most primal part of your lizard brain reacting to stress in a way you can’t consciously regulate. Cortisol and adrenaline, wriggling its way out of your pituitary gland and into the rest of you. That’s all things like you are. Chemicals rattling around in _meat.”_

Dementia squeezed him, kicking her legs weakly.

“You thought I’d forget, didn’t you? That I would let your impudence slide, as if I was stupid? I remember all the times you talked back to me, whore. I remember.”

He raked his claws down her bare skin. Tears welled in the corners of her eyes. Her speech was wheezing, garbled as her windpipe was pressed.

“I’m--”

“Go on. Speak, little thing _._ I’ll let you.”

“I’m-- I-I’m--”

“Sing for me, toy. Sing your terrors, I want to bathe in them. Every drop.”

“I’m gonna cum,” she squeaked.

Black Hat looked at her, stunned, his bubble popped. He didn’t think to remove his hand from her neck.

“Wait,” he said, “what?”

She locked up around him, eyes rolling into the back of her head as she was overtaken by a powerful orgasm. Black Hat could feel her squeezing as hard as she could, he legs locking and twitching, her hips spasming as she tried and failed to rub herself. Finally, with a strangled cry, she was spent. She could barely breathe.

“-- I knew you’d be into that kinda stuff!”

Black Hat withdrew his hand from her neck, equal parts baffled and horrified. She pawed at his wrist, bringing it back and encouraging him.

“No, no, don’t worry, I’m totally cool with it!”

“I’m…”

Black Hat shook his head, his brows knit.

“I was telling you about the people I’ve killed, and you were just… You aren’t scared of me at all, are you? You didn’t even flinch. I thought I had finally managed to squeeze some fear out of you, but you were just getting off... Can you even feel fear? Am I looking for something you can’t even give? Am I the fool here?”

Black Hat thought for a moment. Dementia lay there like yesterday’s jelly.

“No... No, you’re definitely the idiot. But how are you…?”

The big guns, he decided, the big guns. He pierced the skin of her neck, millimetres away from her arteries. Thin rivulets of blood cascaded from the punctures. Without thinking he ran his tongue over them, his mind fogged in instinct, and took the time to bite her painfully. When he pulled up to look at her his face was a mess of slavering flesh and gnashing, rippling bone. In the middle, a cavernous pit that light couldn’t touch, walled with pink, spasming flesh that ran deeper than his body should have allowed. His eye was gone, replaced with a deep fissure that split into the gorge of meat that made up the rest of his face. When he spoke it burbled and sank in the folds, his tongue lolling in the reverberant blackness.

 _“Do you fear me now?”_  

She looked up at him. Her neck was still bleeding, darker at the pricked flesh and tapering out to a soft red as it diluted with her sweat. She reached up and affectionately cupped his mess of a head. Black Hat’s face returned to ‘normal’, too appalled to indulge her further and treading too far into unknown territory to justify his usual arrogance. He stayed there. On top of her. Failing to comprehend.

“... What’s… What’s wrong with you?”

She looked confused.

“Are you not into choking? And the pain stuff? You looked into it.”

He looked at her, then right through her, trying to come up with an adequate explanation for what had just happened.

“I’ve… I’ve seen organs foam up out of every orifice, eyes bleeding and all that sort of thing--”

Dementia nodded.

“-- Crying, pleading,” he continued, “begging, screaming, anger, sometimes, but never… Never nothing _._ Never…”

He struggled. She should have been pleading with her life, or… Something normal. She really was a freak.

“You really don’t understand what you just withstood, do you? Not even a little.”

“I think you look cute like that,” she admitted. “You always get so happy when you do that weird stuff.”

Black Hat looked around the room in exasperation, as if some phantom would appear from the wall to give him a sufficient explanation for what was unfolding under him. He stuttered, too bewildered to be truly angry.

_“Cute?”_

“Totally cute.”

“... _Cute?_ Like a puppy? A kitten? 5.0.5? _Cute?”_

“Yeah, totally! You’re, like...”

She made a cutesy motion with her hands under her chin, fluttering her stuck-on eyelashes.

_“Kawaii!”_

Black Hat recoiled. She may as well have stuck him with a cattle prod.

“We aren’t lovers fooling around in bed! This is not a roleplay! I am threatening to torture and kill you. I am being sincere! This is not for show. This is not for your pleasure. This is not for your amusement. I have done it before. Not doing it takes sincere effort on my part. You are in an unbelievable amount of danger. You’re not just in the lion’s den; you’ve walked up to the lion, picked up a rock and smashed him in the testicles repeatedly. I can’t believe that you, even you, are that dense. I think you know full well what you’re doing, but you don’t grasp the severity of it. And, somehow, showing you hasn’t set off whatever stunted survival instincts you have in there. So I’m going to do you a favour and tell you, in plain terms,” he said, “that I am capricious and that you’re alive only because it directly benefits me! You should be terrified!”

“Haha! Neat,” Dementia chirped.

Black Hat stared at her, completely at a loss. This terrible, fascinating woman. Black Hat suspected that she wasn’t an idiot at all. She was something far stranger. Inscrutable. An anomaly that he couldn’t crack, as much as it infuriated him.

“No, no, it’s not _neat,_ it’s--”

He sighed, shaken.

“Just… Forget it.”

“No, no, go back to being scary, I’m into it!”

“You really shouldn’t be. That’s the problem.”

“Well, I am! Come on, just a little? A little weird shit?”

Black Hat gently tore his face in half, spawning teeth in the seams.

“That doing it for you?”

Dementia was squeezing his hip, coaxing him to thrust.

“Yeah!”

Black Hat shook his head, the wind out of his sails. He didn’t finish that time. He had great difficulty sleeping that night. She’d go dewy-eyed days after, interrupting their mumbled comments and hushed flirting as they passed each other in the hallway. She would grasp his shoulder, flutter her eyelashes and beg for him to pull and contort the ropes of his flesh, promising the complete and absolute fulfilment of any sordid fantasy he had. Millions of years of self-preservation instincts failing spectacularly in front of his very eyes. It was obscene.

He wondered if he was afraid of her. After some careful consideration he concluded that, yes, on some small level he was. The problem with being a great unknowable terror was that he knew himself very well, and so had become accustomed to smugly flitting from place to place, luxuriating in his own unearthly mystique and absolute dominion over flesh and form. Nothing could surprise him because he was the greatest, darkest surprise there could ever be. He held within him shapes and sounds impossible to tolerate without madness, deliration and death. But in all of his years, watching with amusement as great academics picked over skin-bound tomes and incomprehensible scrawls in long-abandoned places, forced to take their own lives as they came to See and Know things about him that they shouldn’t. Black Hat never thought he would meet someone that could withstand him. The human mind is simply incapable of doing so and his true presence forced it to comprehend shapes it couldn’t. Some people took longer than others, the most adamant of souls taking around a minute to turn to manic sludge when he really went balls to the wall.

But he had finally been unpicked, not by scholars rooting where they shouldn’t and following paths long since hidden by time, but by a deranged fuckbuddy that thought he was ‘kawaii’. He had encountered a woman so indomitable that she could look into the shrieking abyss and give it an affectionate little pat on the cheek. She also thought that Portugal was the name of a root vegetable, that dogs and cats could breed successfully but their spawn was hidden by the government for being ‘too cool’ and had, on three separate occasions completely unrelated to one another, tasered herself to win a bet. But now Black Hat begrudgingly, very begrudgingly, had to afford her respect. A polite nod given to worthy company, before they nod back and tase themselves unconscious.

 

* * *

 

In the weeks after their schedule changed. ‘Friday’ was now ‘whenever they felt like it’. This was often.

Sometimes it was in her room, but that was only for when he wanted to feel debased. Band posters nailed unevenly to the walls, discarded underwear littering the floor, spent energy drinks and dirty plates piled on the table with a small oasis of space on the desk for her taped-together laptop and tacky mousepad. The air stank of perfume, body spray and, faintly, rot. When they plummeted to the bed Black Hat would sometimes land on a hairbrush and pick it sullenly from his back. It was gross. It was unsophisticated. But the thought of fumbling in the dark with his teeth squashed to her neck filled him with a perverse glee. It reminded her of first love, she told him, of inexperience and fearing the sound of the doorknob. Screwing on borrowed time. Clumsy and grossly sincere. But they were both many years and many partners beyond that point, so if they indulged in her room too often the veneer scraped thin and the occasion went from thrilling to disappointing. Sometimes Black Hat would come to his senses halfway through and lose steam. Black Hat didn’t care for nostalgic ‘first love’ fantasies. But her mattress was old and he loved the way it shrieked when they moved. Like it was begging him to stop.

Other times it was in his office, just as it was at the start. Usually they fooled around before having sex on the desk as he had work to do, but if they had the time Dementia would roleplay as some sort of innocent, whimpering secretary who was ‘not wise to the ways of the world’ and had been trapped by a ‘big, sexy monster-man’, and as bad an actress as she was Black Hat could certainly appreciate the intent. He could appreciate the pencil skirt, too. And the fear, even if it was cloyingly fake. Thinking about that depressed him, but it was difficult to pull his mind away from it in the empty, cold space after climax. He did try to scare her, hoping to catch her off-guard and to terrify her as easily as he terrified everyone else, but it never took. He would be met with the same warm, sincere look and a caress. She was infuriating on every level and in some sick way it compelled him to come back and keep trying. That was her lure, and before Black Hat knew it four months had passed.  

They were in his bedroom for the first time. He had been out on a ‘business trip’ and, with some regret, had to miss his ‘standard appointment’. But when he went to retire for the night there she was, leaning on the door and wiggling her eyebrows. He wanted to say it had taken some real persistence on her part, but it hadn’t. An eyebrow wiggle and a wink were enough to set him off, now.

On the far side sat an antique four poster bed fitted with cool, dark sheets. In the middle of the bed, two squirming bodies tensing and wriggling under them. With a cry, they were done. Dementia slumped on top of him, panting, rubbing his shoulder with great affection.

“I needed that,” she said.  

Dementia buried her face in his neck, kissing it gently, which he had come to tolerate.

“Me too,” he admitted.

She grazed her teeth along his skin, feeling the bumps of his scales with her tongue. She only needed to murmur to drown out the sound of the rain clattering against the window.

“Long day?”

“Oh, you wouldn’t believe it. An investment of mine tried to fleece me.”  

“You? Was he nuts?”

“You’re a fine one to talk.”

“I would have killed him for you and got the money back, Hatty. You can trust me.”

“I know.”

Black Hat winced, realizing what he had said. There was no way she could have missed that, as much as he wanted her to.

“This demanded a personal touch. You’re well acquainted with that.”

Dementia chuckled, and he couldn’t help but laugh as well.

”In any case, it was awful,” he said. “He was holed up in his castle. I thought I’d show up, you know, give him the old fire and brimstone speech. I took my cape.”

“Your cape?”

“Yes.”

“The red one, or the black one?”

“No, it was more of a dark grey. It has a gold chain on the front. Those are the ‘look at how evil I am’ capes, this was more of ‘look at how rich I am, and also how evil I am’ cape. It’s new.”

“Fancy!”

“I wish I left it at home. I drove up and shot out of the car, knocked on the door and then kicked it in. I made my way to this… I don’t even know what to call him, this... Pernicious _bozo,_ and there he was. You know that look they get when they’re about to die, but they don’t want you to know that they know?”

“Nah, I usually bash their brains out before that happens.”

“Oh, you don’t look at them? Torment them a bit? A beating, break some teeth, pull some nails?”

“I tried, but I get too antsy. When I do that stuff I always think, ‘I can just grab this bitch’s head and break it on that wall’.”

“Dragging it out is half the fun. Hmm. A matter of personal taste. But there is a look they get, and he had it plastered on his face. So I _flap_ my cape--”

He did a motion with his hands as if Dementia wasn’t already enthralled.

“-- I _flap_ my cape and say, ‘fool! You have angered the beastly Black Hat, and--’ you know how the speech went, but he sat there--”

“Do the speech!”

“I’m not doing the speech, I’m too tired. It’s late, and I have a headache.”

“Aw! Even for me?”

“Especially for you. Now let me tell my story, you infuriating harlot. I go to turn, to truly reveal myself in front of this human bag of piss, I’m about to give him the full taste of my extradimensional charisma, but what I didn’t notice was that in the time I spent pontificating he had armed himself. The thing I was funding in the first place. I assumed he had abandoned the idea for the sake of pure profit, but there it was. One, of a promised shipment.”

“What was it? A knife? A sword? A knife-sword?”

“What do you think a dagger is, you fucking imbecile.”

“Nah, that’s different. I’m talking about a swife. Or a knord. Not the same.”

“No, no. It was something far grander. Far worse. I had just peeled my skin back to unveil my many eyes when I heard it. The dulcet, polyphonic tones of impending anguish. The instrument of my annoyance.”

Dementia was flat on her front, her hair stuck to her forehead with sweat, eager to hear more. Black Hat took the lull as a chance to get comfortable, removing his top hat to reveal a bowler hat, then a pirate’s hat, then a tricorn, then a beret, then a fez, then a night-cap. Dementia pondered.

“A violin?”

“No.”

“Organ?”

“No.”

“... A guitar?”

“Sort of. He played, _badly_ , and I saw then what I was facing. The bee-njo. He stared into the cold, dark abyss and, in desperation, filled it with bees and frantic banjo music. A dance as old as evil itself.”

“Did they sting you?”

“The bees? Insects? No, no, the merely circled around and then stung him to death. Embarrassing for the both of us. Insects and arachnids, we have a mutual understanding! Watch this.”

Black Hat reached into his mouth, his throat distending gruesomely and his fingers pressing outwards from the inside. His eye rolled back and, and with a sickening crunch he yanked something out. Sodden, covered in bile and sputum, was a gigantic centipede about thirty centimetres in length.

“Impressed?”

“Oh my God,” Dementia fawned, looking at this hideous thing and poking one of the slimy parts with her pinky, “you’re filled with surprises! You’re like a fun piñata of evil stuff! What’s he called?”

“I don’t name them, they just appear when I’m not looking.”

“Can I eat it?”

“No.”

“Can I name it?”

“If it makes you feel better. You’re the first to suggest one. When I start pulling them out people start screaming and eating each other in fear.”

She quirked a brow. She was sat up, naked and bathed in moonlight. She pointed coyly to Black Hat’s face.

“Just your mouth, or…?”

“Let’s not get into this.”

Dementia rooted in her bag at the side of the bed, removing her wipes and scrubbing off her layers of makeup.

“That it all?”

“The smeared eyeshadow makes it look like you’re dying of something.”

“Oh, I thought I got that all off.”

She scrubbed harder. When her face was bare she answered his question.

“I want to call him Deathshank Killfuck!”

“Even _I_ think that’s on the nose,” said Black Hat. With a ghastly choking noise and a froth of the mouth, Killfuck was returned to his rightful home. Black Hat made sure to ham it up. Mysterious crunching noises, gagging, at one point he broke his own neck, but she looked on. Entirely smitten.

He couldn’t help but be disappointed, even if he was used to it.

“You’re amazing,” she said, meaning it. “You can do all that stuff, and you don’t even have to think about it. I can go invisible, but I have to try really hard, and I can’t do it for too long or my head starts to hurt. But you can break all your bones, and melt, and throw up bugs. It’s mesmerizing.”

Black Hat thought on this, wrapped comfortably in the still night, listening to the rain around them. He knew he had to say something or risk losing access to an easy route of sexual gratification.

There was plenty of people out there that would sleep with him, even if he did piss her off. He put it to the back of his mind.

“Yes, well… Out of all the moist flesh-tubes I’ve ever ejaculated in,” Black Hat said, “you’re...  Certainly one of the moistest.”

“That’s the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard,” Dementia whispered, choking up. He waved her off.

“Yes, yes, whatever, you fantasist.”

He stretched until his arms clicked. With a sigh he reached to his bedside table, pulling out a cigar. He cut it with his teeth and lit it with a snap of his fingers. He puffed and groaned in satisfaction. Dementia looked at him with envy.

“I didn’t want a cigarette until you lit one.”

Black Hat smirked, holding it between his teeth. She poked it with her pinky.

“Can I get in on that?”

“Will you loudly complain if you don’t?”

“Oh yeah,” she said.

He took it from his mouth and handed it over, soft plumes of smoke tumbling from his mouth and the fine slits of his nostrils. Dementia exhaled slowly, took in a lungful, then leaned over the bed to retch. Black Hat bolted after her, taking the cigar back.

“Don’t vomit on my carpet!”

She continued retching, stumbled, naked, to the nearby wastepaper basket and spat into it.

“That’s _awful!_ ”

Black Hat held his head in his hands. He resumed smoking, no longer enjoying it.

“It’s not a bad joint at some shitty party you weren’t even invited to, you harlot,” he said, “you don’t inhale a cigar!”

Black Hat cringed, being subject to a sight and angle that was less than flattering. Dementia wiped her mouth, the worst of it passed.

“... Wait, you don’t?”

“No. I should have known you would have no idea what you’re doing. You hold it in your mouth to taste. Otherwise you spew everywhere, eurgh. Look.”

He puffed demonstratively.

“You see? No vomiting. No spitting.”

“Lemme try again.”

“No!”

“No, I’m serious, I can do it.”

“You can barely handle being naked without disaster.”

“Trust me.”

He groused the entire time, but still handed it back when she came to bed. She brought it to her mouth, held it there, then exhaled as he had. She whooped.

“Are you proud of me?”

“I’m never proud,” he said, suppressing it. She giggled. She leaned back and rested her hands behind her head, as he was fond of doing. Her speech was muffled as she tried to speak around the cigar.

“This is swanky. No wonder you smoke these things.”

“Well,” Black Hat crowed, “I am a man of exquisite and artisanal tastes. Anything I do is worth doing.”  

“Taste like shit, though,” she added. Black Hat took this to be a personal attack on not just his choice of cigar, but on his personal taste.

“It’s fifteen grand for a box of those, you pleb.”

“Wait, really? How come they taste so shitty?”

“Hand that back.”

She did. He vowed to hold onto it, this time. He sucked away at it, stewing as she coughed once more. They settled in once more, easing in for the night. Her shoulders shook.

“Fuck me, what’s wrong with you now?”

He looked to find she wasn’t crying. She was suppressing a laugh.

“Flug told me a joke earlier and I’m still thinking about it.”

“I’ve heard every single pitch-black joke you could ever imagine, so don’t even bother. Every possible noun and verb combination that you shouldn’t laugh at. All of them. So whatever grisly thing you’ve got up your sleeve,” he said, “save it, because you’ll only embarrass yourself.”

Dementia considered this, still warm and dewy from afterglow.

“A sandwich walks into a bar,” she said, “and the bartender says, ‘we don’t serve food here’.”

Black Hat cracked up, then cursed very loudly. He tried to play it off as a shout of indignity but failed. Dementia had scraped another little victory. They grew more common as they spent time together.

And, sickeningly, he had come to mind them less and less.

“Ugh, that reminds me,” he sulked, wanting to change the subject. "Flug knows.”

“You told him? I didn’t. I thought it’d make the sad-sack sadder, so I was saving it for when it’d be funniest.”

“I didn’t tell him, but your flirting hasn’t been subtle.”

“I think it has.”

“Do you remember when I was checking up on you both, in the lab? Gauging the progress of the heat ray? You had him in a headlock.”

“I don’t remember that, but that does sound like something I’d do.”

”You asked how I was, how my day was going, and then offered to shove your entire arm up my arsehole.”

“Oh yeah. You think that clued him in?”

“He has ears. So yes.”

“Precious memories…”

“This happened yesterday.”

She shrugged. Black Hat tutted, rolling over. He felt her warm, soft body press into his from behind. Warm, nice smelling--

He shoved her back.

“No cuddling.”

She rubbed him in that way she always did, the way he had to pretend to hate.

“Really? C’mon…”

“No. We rub each other with our genitals until we’re done and that's it. I’ve been clear about this from the beginning.”

“What about sleeping?”

He thought about it.

“Sleeping… Is acceptable. But no funny business. That’s your half, this is mine.”

He scooted to the edge of the bed, reached down and turned on the electric blanket, the pad underneath them growing warm. Dementia took the opportunity to squeeze his backside, settling in under the covers.

“Aww,” she said.

“I get cold,” he said, too defensively, “and I want to be comfy in my own room.”

“You really are a big snake-man! Heating pad and everything.”

He went to bluster something in response but found he couldn’t. “Go to sleep,” he hissed.

“Yeah, yeah. Night-night, handsome.”

“Whatever.”

He popped his monocle off. He pulled the covers up to his neck and lay still, with his eyes shut. As he began to doze, he felt Dementia’s hand land gently on his cock. He chuckled salaciously, ready to chastise her and her insatiable appetite. Before he could she was flopping his penis about and laughing.

_“Dementia!”_

“It’s like a little squid hand!”  

“We have _talked_ about this!”

“Yeah, your mouth said ‘this is so embarrassing’, but your dick said ‘look at me wiggle’.”

“You’re worse than a cat with a ball of yarn. The novelty should have worn off by now, you easily-distracted fool.”

“Yeah! But it so didn’t? That’s weird, right?”

_“Sleep!”_

“Fine, fine!”

She heard him quietly complain. Then, it grew quieter. Eventually, it tapered off entirely, giving way for his gentle, even breaths as he slept. Dementia sat up, looking at him, taking him all in. It was amazing to see such a wonderful, awful creature so quiet. So content. It was unnerving.

His horrendously loud snoring began and she felt more at ease.

Dementia looked him over, revelling in the chance to see him so exposed. His skin was smooth and uniformly grey. Squamous, but only on closer inspection; she had to squint to make out the small, individual scales, save for the larger ones on his wrists, shoulders and stomach. She prodded his back with her pinky. His skin was firmer and unusually cold. She noticed movement and stopped. He rolled over, instinctively burrowing towards a heat source which to her delight happened to be her. He shoved his face into her stomach and flopped his arms over her bare thighs, rousing slightly.

“‘M not funding… Another torture basement… Overdone… Just stab ‘em...”

He punctuated this with another deafening snore. Dementia wrapped her fingers around the base of his neck and stroked affectionately.

“Can _I_ have a torture basement?”

“Sure,” he grunted, somewhere else entirely, “whatever you want.”

“Aww, Hatty!”

She wiped the drool from her thigh and hugged him as best she could without disturbing him. She had missed the window to sleep afterglow offered but was content to lie there until she did eventually doze off. A gentle, pleasant wait, rather than bitterly powering through insomnia. Doting and stroking.

He made a noise.

She stopped. The noise stopped with it, replaced with his slow breathing and the snores again. She stroked again, and he made the noise again.

It was a moan. A throaty moan. Eventually, his voice rattled off entirely and Dementia was left with an even thrumming of his chest, swaying in volume with the rise and fall of his ribcage and her movements against his neck.

He was purring.

“No way,” she breathed.

She continued. Dementia leaned over and looked at his face. He looked content, his tongue peeping a half-inch from his mouth. She resisted the urge to slap it gently but the temptation was excruciating.  

“You’re shitting me,” she whispered, too gleeful to keep her thoughts contained. “Dude. Dude, are you awake? You’re setting me up to think ‘hey, he’s doing something cute’ then you’re gonna spring up like ‘haha bitch’ and then shoot acid up my cooch or something. That’s what you’re doing right now, I feel it.”

His stillness, save for his thrumming and the tilting of his neck, showed he was not.

“Oh.”

She wanted to squeal. This was everything she could have ever dreamed of. A true jackpot. She was shaking, giddy. She could gush about this when he was awake, and gush she would. Or, she could--

Her eyes narrowed and a sharp smile harpooned her face.

 

* * *

 

Dementia was in his office. He didn’t know where, and he didn’t know why, but she was in here, stalking invisibly. It was the subtle details. The air was different. A painting, askew. The fact she had clattered into a potted plant at full force.

“I know you’re in here, Dementia.”

Silence.

“I smell you. You aren’t as crafty as you think you are.”

She suppressed a mischievous giggle. He looked left, then right. Slowly, with a great deal of suspicion, he resumed his work.  

“You’re stuck to the wall,” he said, “by the window. The one with the bookshelf.”

What an idiot! She was, in fact, on the ceiling.

“No, I’m not!”

Black Hat turned his head to the source of the noise. He happened to look her in the eye.

“So you are here, then!”

Dementia slapped herself on the forehead, losing her grip and landing on the floor in a heap.

“I’m glad Flug is the brains,” said Black Hat, nursing his smugness like a fine brandy, “because if it were you the mansion would have exploded months ago. If you’re here for sex, I’m not in the mood. I’m still sore from last night.”

“Puh-lease, not everything is about sex! If I didn’t know better I’d think you were obsessed with me.”

Black Hat bristled visibly. Aha, there went his eye, twitching! Cute!

“What do you want? I’m busy.”

“Oh, nothing, nothing!”

She skittered across the floor, then lay prone. Black Hat rose to search for her, his tongue flicking as he tried to make out where she was. Dementia crept up to him from behind. She rubbed her thumb firmly along the back of his neck and, to her mischievous delight, elicited the same purr from before. He clamped his hands over his mouth. He swung his hands, catching her by the shirt.

Black Hat hoisted her up, slung her over his shoulder and tossed her unceremoniously out into the hallway before slamming the door. She heard muffled obscenities, soon overwhelmed by her own cruel laughter. He pretended it had never happened the next time they spoke, and vehemently denied all knowledge of having such a spot when she pressed him. He only brought it up when he was on the very edge of sleep, mumbling complaints about being embarrassed and guiding her hand to the back of his neck.

 

* * *

 

Dementia had seen this show, in its entirety, eight times. And pirated the films, which she had also seen eight times despite hating the third one. She had torrented the spin-off manga. And the mobile games. And emulated the PSP game. And the visual novels. She had three wall scrolls, eight plush toys, one tasteful big-titty mousepad and a hoard of ship art. Black Hat, however, didn’t understand what the shit he was looking at. Squeaky-voiced, technicolour teens looking dramatic and having monologues at one another, punctuated with frilly dresses. He was flat on the couch, propping his cheek up with his hand. Dementia was flopped on top of him, gripping with her arms like a koala. Dementia could mouth the words at this point, and it was a slow moment, so they got to talking.

“... Vampires?”

“Real,” Black Hat said.

“Werewolves?”

“Real. Any popcorn left?”

“Yeah.”

“What kind?”

“Sweet, but my own recipe. You get that powdery stuff that makes strawberry milk, mix it with water until it’s slimy, then marinate the popcorn it. And add vodka, soy sauce, whatever you’ve got to hand. I call it Strawberry-Float-Crunch-Slime-Drunk.”

“I’ve never wanted anything less. How are you still alive?”

“Who knows! Flug tried some, but now every time I bring it up he starts crying and holding his stomach. Ghosts, what about ghosts?”

“Ghosts? Really, Dementia? Ghosts? Are you that juvenile? Do we live in some sort of cartoon? Ghosts? You should be ashamed. Of course they’re not real. You fool. You idiot.”

“Oh. Huh. I’m… Actually kinda ashamed.”

“You bloody well should be.”

“... Tooth fairy?”

“Real.”

“You’re shitting me.”

“I’m not. I hate that bitch. She sussed bone stealing would be big business years back, beat me to it. That market is nearly impossible to break into.”

“Huh!”

“I’d be good at stealing teeth. I wouldn’t even wait until they fell out.”

“Hatty?”

“Hmm?”

“You’d be the best at it.”

He rubbed his neck, flattered but unwilling to show it.

“Dementia, I’m bored. I’ve watched two episodes of this sugary drek and nothing has happened.”

“I know, I know, stick with it.”

“No, I won’t! I’m a man of specific tastes. There better be grotesque violence, or a buxom woman appearing out of nowhere to jiggle hypnotically.”

“Dude, I know, I’m the same. Trust me.”

He huffed and sulked, too used to getting what he wanted when he wanted it.

_“Fine.”_

On cue, the frilliest of the frilly cartoon teens was killed in an act of excruciating violence. They both hollered. Black Hat slapped the couch, in hysterics.

“You remembered!”

“I did!”

“You remembered I love decapitations!”

“I totally did! There’s a bit later on where-- do you care about spoilers?”

“Fuck no.”

“-- Where they’re all _crying_ and _shooting each other_ , it’s hilarious.”

“Is that so? How far in?”

“Near the end.”

“... What time is it?”

Dementia looked at the clock on the wall.

“Dementia,” said Black Hat, “there’s no battery in that thing.”

“Yeah, but I’ve learned to guess what time it is, from the way the moonlight hits it. It’s… Eleven? I think? You got stuff to do tomorrow?”

“I always have ‘stuff to do’.”

“Uh, good point. Anything to do that can’t be put off to watch cartoons?”

“No.”

“Cool. I’m glad you came around,” she murmured.

“I didn’t. One high point doesn’t redeem your awful taste. These shows are complete shit.”

“I wasn’t talking about the show,” she said, snuggling into him. He didn’t have a rebuttal.

 

* * *

 

Black Hat sighed. He pinched the gap between his eyes, exhaled loudly, then grabbed her gently by the wrist and lead her hand under the covers.

“Are you sure,” she whispered, as people do in church pews. “Are you sure about this?”

“Get it out of your system.”

She nodded solemnly, gravely, with a gravitas she struggled to truly grasp. With sober dignity she gripped his penis and flopped it about, cackling wildly.

“This is so neat,” she laughed.

“I suppose it is,” he grumbled, rubbing his temple.

 

* * *

 

Sleep was a luxury to Black Hat. He enjoyed it, but he didn’t need it to live. It sat in the same place sex did. Dreams were certainly a treat for him. They were where he found his newest and most awful forms or considered plans that were especially fun and outlandish.

He couldn’t help but imagine her, as he had for the last few weeks, with her weird little eyes and too-small nose, her garish makeup and worse haircut, her maddening quickness to laugh and her high spirits, her fantastic work and unflinching resilience, her long, sleek legs and her curves as she bent over--

Black Hat awoke with a start, supremely angry and unpleasantly sticky. He checked under the covers, scrambling for someone to blame for this hideous indignity. This was clearly Dementia’s fault, that bitch. That insufferable, awful, heinous bitch, consuming his thoughts like carrion, picking at his every waking moment even when she wasn’t there. Obsessive, demented, torturous whore. Was he not allowed to sleep? Was he not allowed even that, did her cruelty extend to him? A great, fiery hate sat in his heart, so profound in its strength that he found it hard to move; a tormenting, delirious hate much like the hate that flared in their quiet moments. When she tied up her hair and he spied the nape of her neck, when he watched her work in hysterical, side-splitting violence, and when they were together but taking care of their own business; Black Hat writing his letters in his office as she sprawled over the chair and read an awful, vapid magazine. Hate, hate, he thought, gripping his bedsheets until they tore, hate, it must have been, it was the only thing it could have been. Fantastic, ruinous hate, deleterious, maddening hate! Supreme, consuming, giddy hate! Thunderous, raucous, yearning hate!

Hate, he told himself, begging for it to be the case, “hate”, he said out loud to himself, hate! A creature that moved, breathed and bled in hate, and even he had never experienced something so odious as the awful squirming in his chest, an awful, thrashing, demented hate that ate his insides like worms, he only wanted to sleep! The nerve of her, the gall, it sickened him! This infuriating woman! He was outside her door, the door with the broken lock, and in one movement he had swung it open and stormed to her bed and--

His anger dissipated, but his shaking remained. Why was he shaking? He didn’t shake. She was asleep, belly down like road-kill. She was chewing her own hair. She roused, looking up at him, a grave silhouette against the moonlight. She didn’t even flinch. It sickened him.  

“Hey,” she said, not bothering to pick the hair from her mouth. “What’re…”

She blinked unevenly, head lolling forward before she caught herself.

“What-- What’re you doing here?”

“Move over.”

“Huh?”

“Move over.”

She scrunched up her nose.

“Dude… Right now? I’m not… Not really in the mood. It’s…”

She checked her phone, groaning as the light seared her eyes.

“... Four in the morning.”

“I’m not here for that!”

“Then what’re--”

He clambered into bed, lying beside her. She blinked, not taking this to be real, and felt no need to become invested in something she knew would be cruelly removed from her when she woke up.

“... Huh,” she mumbled. “Okay.”

“Shut up,” he hissed, sounding frantic. “Shut up, I hate you.”  

She wriggled down, intertwining her legs with his. She breathed in his smell and kissed him on the neck slowly. She continued until she dozed off again, nestled there. And there, on the precipice of sleep, wedged between what is real and what is wishful thinking, she felt a kiss on her neck. It trailed upwards slowly to her chin, then her cheek, then the very, very corner of her mouth and stopped. She took this opportunity to surprise him, lunging up and kissing him until he moaned and met her intensity. His hand gripped the back of her head, her fingers clawing painfully at his back as they trapped one another in a hard, crooked embrace. Their bodies crushed and stuck to one another, like bugs underfoot.

“I love you,” she cooed, rubbing his neck.

 _“Please_ shut up,” he begged, not wanting to say it.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading! if you have any thoughts/questions, feel free to leave a comment below, or hop on over to my tumblr at http://maximum-overboner.tumblr.com because i'm extremely creative with names 
> 
> if you're waiting for malevolent contributions to update; thank you for the patience! this was only meant to be, ah... about 2k words long. apologies!
> 
> thank you again for reading!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [His Greatest Mistake](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17157338) by [Madredhattie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Madredhattie/pseuds/Madredhattie)




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